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DISCLAIMER: The genealogical, cultural and personal agendas and opinions found on the web page at http://www.familytreedna.com/public/Stuart/default.aspx and its links may not be those of any web site host, DNA testing company, employee, administrator, moderator or scientific community.

A ~$40 test for SNP S310 (a.k.a. R-L746) will prove whether or not ANY man is a patrilineal descendant of the first High Steward of Scotland (and therefore of Robert the Bruce). If one of your biological cousins descends from the first High Steward of Scotland so do you, even if your only known Stewart ancestor was a woman.

ScotlandsDNA.com claims that about 50% of the men who have the surname Stewart and who live in the UK descend from the first High Steward of Scotland. Less than 25% of those who volunteered for free DNA tests (and Stewarts who are in FTDNA's database) do.

Autosomal DNA

One may be able to find a Stewart cousin via genealogical research or via an autosomal test (e.g., Family Finder) of one's own DNA. Cousins may or may not inherit enough of the same DNA to show that they have a common ancestor.

A child randomly receives half of his autosomal DNA from his mother and half from his father.

First Cousins may inherit a quarter of their DNA from one of their common grandparents.

Second Cousins may inherit an eighth of their DNA from their common great-Gparents.

Third Cousins may inherit a sixteenth of their DNA from their common ggGparents.

Fourth Cousins may inherit a 32nd of their DNA from their common gggGparents.

Fifth Cousins may inherit a 64th of their DNA from their common ggggGparents.

Sixth Cousins may inherit 128th of their DNA from their common gggggGparents - segments of DNA become so small at this level and beyond that accurate comparisons may not be possible.

A man may JOIN THIS PROJECT even if he has never ordered a DNA test, and no matter what his surname is.

As soon as his Y-DNA test results are released they are displayed next to his kit number in the "Ungrouped" category at the bottom of the "Y-DNA Results" web page at https://www.familytreedna.com/public/Stuart/default.aspx?section=yresults. If he tested at a high enough level to determine that he is a member of this family he will be quickly reassigned to a different category.

Please remove yourself from this project if your Y-DNA test results show that you are not a patrilineal descendant of the first High Steward of Scotland, e.g., if:

The name of your haplogroup does not begin with the letter "R-".

The majority of your matches at the Y-37 level or higher do not have a version of the surname Stewart.

Over eight of your marker values differ from 181994's at the bottom of the "Y-DNA Results" web page.

Your completed Y-DNA37 or higher test results remain in the "Ungrouped" category for more than one week.

For security reasons we want to make sure that only members of this family and their closest DF41 cousins have access to this project. The Y-DNA test results of most of its members prove that they qualify. Administrators may allow members who have not had Y-DNA tests to remain in this project if they post genealogical evidence that they do. Please remove yourself from this project if you do not. Those who are mistakenly removed from this project may contact an administrator.

How May We Help Each Other?

The more members of your branch order NGS, etc. tests the more likely we will be able to create pedigrees that show exactly how all of them are related to each other. Genealogists are more likely to contribute DNA samples and pay for their own tests.

Diana Gale Matthiesen stated: "Genealogy is like a jigsaw puzzle... If everyone hides their piece of the puzzle, none of us will get anywhere ... there are some serious practical considerations relevant to DNA projects that make lineage-sharing imperative." The fewer make their test results and the name, etc. of their earliest genealogically traced patrilineal ancestor private, the sooner we may determine exactly how all of us are related to each other.

Some of the goals of FTDNA's Royal Stewart project are to:

Recruit as many patrilineal descendants of the High Stewards of Scotland as possible, no matter what their surnames and geographic locations may be.

Help them to have their DNA tested for genealogical purposes by providing information and financial assistanceto those who request it (please help us to recruit more European volunteers for FREE DNA TESTS).

Use their test results and pedigrees to determine exactly how they are related to each other and to which branch (sept or stirpes) of this GENS they belong.

Examples:

About 50 members of this project had been tested by FTDNA or one of its competitors for SNP S781 (R1b1a2a1a2c1i1a1) by Feb/4/2015. About 40% tested positive and about a third added their test results to their surnames as a suffix in order to facilitate subgrouping, etc.

ScotlandsDNA.com claims that: "About 20% of all men who carry the famous surname Stewart share Sir John’s lineage while 30% are descended from Sir John’s brother, James Stewart, the 5th High Steward of Scotland." James' son Walter helped Robert Bruce I win the great victory at Bannockburn, and married Robert's daughter Marjorie. Their son became Robert II, the first Stewart king.

According to Wikipedia, "When the Scottish revolt against Edward I broke out in July 1297, James Stewart the 5th High Steward of Scotland (died 16 July 1309) led into rebellion a further group of disaffected Scots, including: Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, MacDuff, the son of the earl of Fife, and the young Robert the Bruce (died on 7 June 1329). The future king was now twenty-two, and in joining the rebels he seems to have been acting independently of his father, who took no part in the rebellion and appears to have abandoned Annandale once more for the safety of Carlisle. It appears that Robert Bruce had fallen under the influence of his grandfather’s friends, Wishart and Stewart, who had inspired him to patriotic resistance. With the outbreak of the revolt, Robert left Carlisle and made his way to Annandale, where he called together the knights of his ancestral lands and, according to the English chronicler Walter of Guisborough, addressed them thus: 'No man holds his flesh and blood in hatred, and I am no exception. I must join my own people and the nation in whom I was born'." Would Scots heed his call today?

Our Phylogenetic Tree's Foundation Is Under Construction

QUESTION: "Isn't it strange that none of the testers have any SNPs in common? I would have thought some type of pattern would have emerged by now."

ANSWER: "Most of it was planned that way.

A few months ago we developed a strategy to try to get as many branches identified through BigY as we could to develop a framework. Most of the kits that have tested so far were targeted under that strategy which, if successful, would result in one kit per branch. We still have a few of the targeted kits pending which ma y identify yet more branches.

But, now that we have a relatively comprehensive framework, additional tests that were not in our targeted set should start the pairing process.

Cheers,
Larry Walker"

Note: About half of our current NGS Testers have already been coupled with members of their own branch of our R-L746 Gens according to Graph # 1 below. Larry's June, 2014 recommendations for Big Y tests were based on genetic distance (shared off-modal branch marker values and SNPs indicate kinship more reliably).

An Analysis of the Big Y Results of some R-S781 Testers

We thank FTDNA's brilliant and hard working Stuart project administrator Desideriu for his Analysis of the Big Y Test Results of ALL descendants of the first High Steward of Scotland. The lastest versions of his working drafts are at:

Order a book in French (profits are donated to the General Funds of FTDNA's Stewart projects as needed) about the well-documented and exciting military, etc. history of Desideriu's ancestors in Corsica, etc.

Table # 1 allows one to compare some of the results of the NGS and à la carte SNP tests of descendants of Sir John Stewart of Bonkyll whose .bam files Desideriu analysed. Click here to see an updated version.

ID Column

TESTERS

Surname

Stuart

Stuart

Stuart

Stewart

Stewart

Stewart

Stewart

Jones

Clan / Branch

Corsica

Corsica

Appin

SNP type by L. Walker

A1a1

A1a1

A1a2

A1a3

A1a4

A1a5

A1a6

A1a7

STR type by B. Dettmann

23a

23a

29a

2002

25

21

2002

FGC ID

X9XPK

YSEQ ID

429

901

486

YFULL ID

YF01691

YF02184

YF02080

YF02313

YF02179

YF02381

YF02406

FTDNA ID

E16164

E15052

251918

315522

128499

187778

143035

235915

SNP Name Column

Test Results

2682514 AT

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

2903315 TC AG

Negative

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

6188606 AG

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

7538242 CT

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

7699499 CT

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

7983139 GA / A309

Positive

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

8439846 GA

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

Negative

8675792 GA

Negative

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

9108372 AT / A308

Positive

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

9146901 GA

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

9511177 CT

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

13135747 GT

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

14005493 GA

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

14200031 AG

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

15817682 AG

Negative

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

15858709 GA

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

15861256 CT

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

16560771 CT

Negative

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

17286590 CT

Negative

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

17423425 CT / A919

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

18026006 CA / A922

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

Negative

18729831 AG

Negative

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

19003150 GA

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

19061777 CA / A888

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

19093413 CT / A920

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

20806568 AG / A889

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

21628621 AG

Negative

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

22458222 AG

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

22461696 GC

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

22461955 CG

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Positive

Negative

23963147 AG / A306

Positive

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

23998732 GA / A307

Positive

Positive

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

Negative

SNP found in FTDNA BigY Results

SNP confirmed by YSEQ single SNP test

Potential SNP identified by YFULL experts

SNP confirmed by FGC Elite Y Results

SNP identified by YFULL experts and confirmed by YSEQ

Italic font indicates that a position was read less than 10 times.
* No call indicates an inconclusive NGS test result for this specific SNP. A conclusive result may be obtained via a ~$40 à la carte test, e.g., for SNP "7983139 GA / A309".

Desideriu uses a computer than runs a Linux Operating system to analyse, build and update his SNP tables. Downloading the .bam files and reading and understanding the tutorials about how to use the Genetic Tools needed to interpret them, etc. took months.

Administrator Larry's Graph # 1 below shows exactly how some descendants of the first High Steward of Scotland are related to each other.All of them belong to the R1b1a2a1a2c1i1a branch of an ISOGG tree that includes all of the descendants of the y-LCA of every living race.

What a Big Y tester can do in order to benefit from his Big Y results after FTDNA delivers them:

We are fortunate that NGS expert Larry Walker analyzes the Big Y test results of descendants of the first High Steward of Scotland, finds novel variants (SNP mutations) via which their branches can be identified, and lists them in Graph # 1 above so that those who did not order an NGS test can prove to which branches they belong (and thereby facilitate their genealogical research) via ~$40 à la carte SNP tests.

FTDNA's Big Y Novel Variants report and VCF file only show the markers that meet FTDNA's quality threshold. This means that we cannot assume that any potential SNP is negative if it is shown as “rejected”, or if it is not shown on the Novel Variants report in the VCF file.

Yfull will help us to obtain full utility from your Big Y test by analysing and permanently storing your results for $49 if you:

Telephone FTDNA at (713) 868-1438 or email Helpdesk@FTDNA.com and request that a DOWNLOAD.BAM FILE button be added to your Big Y Results web page as soon as possible.

Login to your FTDNA account a few days later (if FTDNA says two days or months it may take five).

A pop-up should appear. Click on the green “Download BAM” button (NOT the “Download VCF” button). Contact the FTDNA help desk and ask for one if you do not see one. A Chrome browser user reported that it took about ten minutes to download a ~750 MB file named "7948.bam.zip" and about an hour to upload it to YFull. More info about the BAM specification is at http://samtools.github.io/hts-specs/SAMv1.pdf.

Temporarily save your .BAM file on your Desktop or in a directory that you can remember.

Click the “Order Now” button near the bottom of the web page at http://www.yfull.com/. Some people confuse YFULL with a different business named Full Genomes Corporation (FGC) that markets a product frequently referred to as ‘Full Y’.

Fill out the form. For “Source of raw data”, select “Upload .BAM file from my computer” (the first option). Click on the temporary link that Yfull immediately emails to you, add your .bam file to the upload queue and click the START button.

Solve the anti-spam puzzle and click the “Order Now” button.

You may delete FTDNA's .zip file from your computer after YFull emails your YFull ID and temporary password to you, or store it on Google Drive in case you need it later.

YFull will bill you $49 after it completes its interpretation of your Y-Chr Sequence about three weeks later. You may then join Yfull's "R-DF41" and "R-L21" Groups so that your YFull group administrators can see your raw data (ChrY positions, "private" variants, known SNPs, STRs, etc.).

Note: This will give direct access to your YFull analysis to both Larry and Desideriu (the chief administrator of FTDNA's STEWART S781+ PROJECT for descendants of Sir John Stewart of Bonkyll).

After joining, you should receive a request from an admin or co-admin of each project (I am CCing them) telling you what raw data they would like for you to provide and requesting your permission to use it. That will get you into:

From my end, I recommend that you join http://www.yfull.com/ which will cost another $49, but IMHO is well worth it.

Over time (I have a large backlog) I will eventually browse your BAM data at Yfull to confirm the status (+ or -) and read quality of over 700 novel variants. Several good reasons to join YFull that do not include anything that I might do are:

Other than YFull, everything above is being done by individual volunteers. If any of us gets run over by a truck, then whatever we are providing goes Kaput. YFull is run as a business by a team, so is not vulnerable to the individual casualty risk.

YFull provides complete BAM file analysis including Y-STRs and mtDNA (what you get from the rest of us is partial) with a great set of on-line reports and tools. See http://rangebiome.org/YFullTour.pdf for examples, or go to http://www.yfull.com/ and login as email “guest@yfull.com”, password “yfull” for a hands-on sample.

YFull's experimental tree for our R-DF41/CTS2501/ subclade includes private as well as public SNPs, and is updated every 2 to 4 weeks.

I hope that FTDNA and/or FGC will eventually evolve to providing a similar level of analysis and access, but YFull is the only game in town that I know of for now.

Administrator Larry's Request

NGS expert Larry Walker Larry prefers that your .BAM file be interpreted by YFULL:
"ANYBODY WHO HAS BIGY (or FGC) SHOULD PLEASE-PLEASE-PLEASE JOIN YFULL!!!... While processing new YFull data in preparation for the diagram at http://rangebiome.org/Morrison-Q.jpg for kit 52062 Miller, I found it positive for 17326894CA and 7311229CT which had not been called in the FTDNA reports. And, I found kit 82890 Morrison positive for 7311229CT which had not been called in the FTDNA reports. So, I developed the SPECULATIVE diagram on the ASSUMPTION that all Q’s might be positive (but not called by FTDNA) for those two novel variants. IF CONFIRMED for all of the remaining kits through YFull, it rectifies the problems contained in the online diagram." See FORUM.

Shall We Take the Next Step?

The results of your Y-DNA67 test would be useless if you were the only descendant of the first High Steward of Scotland who ordered it. More descendants of the first High Steward of Scotland have ordered Big Y and Y-DNA111 STR tests than the average Stewart family because of their extraordinary family spirit and because FTDNA created an exclusive project for them.

Shall we take the next step? 148478 Thomas (S781-) tried to get the ball rolling by being the first to order an FGC test. S781+ Administrator Desideriu ordered a $975 Elite Y test on Nov/04/2014. Were their efforts in vain?

A $575 Big Y test covers about 75% of the SNPs in ISOGG's database, and about 70% of the private SNPs that an $975 Elite Y test covers. A test that covers all 14.6 million bases costs even more.

"As we are now at a level where identifying branches from STR results appears to be just about impossible, that makes everybody who is willing to make the investment a 'priority candidate'".

"Big Y analyst Larry also wrote: ". . .we have covered most, or all, readily identifiable high priority candidates for identification of new branches. ANY additional BigY tests now will either help refine the branches that we have identified, or will identify new branches. Any branch or twig on the box diagram in “Graph #1” that has more than 1 novel variant shown would benefit from refinement."

"... there appears to be no clear indicator from either phylogenetic trees or spreadsheet examination of STR results for projecting whether a person can be expected to test either positive or negative for S781." Must the STR haplotypes of all grandsons of Walter the third High Steward have been identical to the Mode of this entire Stewart family therefore?

" ... 148478 Thomas tested S781-, so whatever hope we had that his FGC test would help clarify the S781+ group is gone. After looking at GD’s, I think that he may end up as a third kit in the Pierce-Thompson cluster."

"Anyway, that is just my opinion. Different people will look at the same data and develop different opinions. The way I see things for now are posted at a permalink http://rangebiome.org/L746Strategy.jpg for whatever it is worth. That Graph is a LOT of work, so I will not update it very often."

Administrator Larry may update Graph # 1 above, and recommend more SNP tests after FTDNA delivers more results. These results may make it easier for some S781+ and S781- Stewarts to determine to which branch they belong by ordering individual SNP tests ($40) instead of Big Y tests ($700).

Yourcontributions to the General Fund of FTDNA's royal Stuart project will be used as you see fit, e.g., to pay for the DNA tests of men with your surname who still live in the part of the world from which you suspect that your patrilineal ancestors came. Most of the donations below were made in order to pay for the DNA tests of men who have the surname Stewart and who live in the UK.

Those who donate to our General Fund can help to avoid confusion and to facilitate communication by using FTDNA's form to state:

Their own names or kit numbers.

For what test they want their donations to pay, e.g., Big Y.

The kit number of the donor of the DNA that will be used for the test.

FTDNA can not use our General Fund to pay for all or part of your DNA test unless your project administrator approves BEFORE you order it.
.

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